Sand Delivery!

Posted on September 30, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Normally we don’t work on Fridays because we’re travelling, but we’re staying in town this weekend to be here for the new volunteers. I think Avy wanted to take a mental health day, but I pressured her into coming with me. Pretty sure she was just going to come along for moral support and then ended up teaching English. I helped though! Sorry, Avy…

The front of the classroom.. Try teaching with the floor like this and not tripping. It’s a challenge.

I graded the homework while Avy did some phonics work. It took me forever because it was HORRIBLE. For English, they just had to say what greeting they would use at five different times throughout the day. For Math, they had to write five numbers in words. It was so bad that probably 25% of the class got “3” wrong. This is what I’m talking about with the whole “the kids are unlearning what they already know” thing. They absolutely know how to say “3”, but they panic because they think it’s more complicated than that. We re-taught the greetings and the numbers and then gave the kids a math test. I honestly don’t even want to grade it because I don’t have high expectations.

Today’s big event of the day at school was a sand delivery! Exciting! Somehow, nothing here ends up being simple. The sand delivery is because the floors in the school were constructed horribly when the school was first built, so now the classrooms all have giant potholes in the floors. They’ve since fixed three out of six of them, and Avy is using some of the money she raised before coming to fix the rest. The sand truck came to bring the sand they’ll need for the project, but the ground is so soft from all the rain we had recently that the truck got stuck and just dumped the sand there. Luckily, Everlasting, the P2 teacher who has been helping to coordinate the job, said that it was okay because he thought that might happen and asked the kids to bring pans to school. The upper primary kids spent part of the morning carrying sand (on their heads, of course) from the dump location to the school. I think it’s hilarious that all of the kids actually brought pans with them, and it’s awesome that they’re always doing things to help out around the school.

The relocated sand pile. You can see more kids coming with sand on their heads from the left side of the picture.

We headed home after lunch, and guess what??? Best day ever!! (Yes, I know that I claim best day ever pretty often, but so what?) Everlasting has a bike, and he offered to let me borrow it for the weekend when Avy said something about how I miss my bike. With no hesitation, he said I could take it over the weekend. How cool is that?? I haven’t decided how I’m going to handle riding on the road here, but maybe if I go early in the morning, there won’t be many cars out.

The rest of the day was spent just cleaning and organizing to get ready for the new volunteers. Avy and I moved my bed around, so I hopefully will get better air circulation from the fan and won’t wake up every morning feeling melted and gross. I actually think I like the new setup better anyway. Fingers crossed that Joe puts all of the new volunteers in the other room, and our room can stay just the two of us! We finally found out (maybe) that we’re getting six new volunteers, 4 girls and 2 guys, 5 teaching and 1 medical. That means zero agriculture (unlike the 2 that they told me before), but I’m thinking that maybe I’ll be able to convince some new people to come along anyway. I really hope so.

RIP Couch… and Another Mouse…

Posted on September 29, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m really liking this whole school thing… and the not waking up at 5AM thing. I promise though, if someone comes this weekend who is willing to come to the farm with me, I’ll start going back. I still have to put the finishing touches on the poop hole, but it’s hard to find the motivation when I know that it’s just going to be me.

Song time at the beginning of class. The kids get super excited about this, so Avy likes to do it at the very beginning of class to encourage the kids to show up on time.

I went back to school with Avy today. I’m starting to feel like myself again, but my stomach is still a little out of wack. It was such a good day because the kids were well-behaved! It’s amazing how one day, the class is so bad and you leave feeling discouraged and exhausted, and the next day, the class is so good and you leave feeling elated and still exhausted. It usually seems like a good day is immediately followed by a bad day, so right when you’re feeling like maybe you have things under control, you get an aggressive reality check.
Today’s English lesson was about greetings: Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening. We talked about what times you say each of them and then had the kids practice for about an hour. All of the things we’re teaching seem like they should take about 5 seconds to explain, but that’s never the case. It’s hard to tell how much of that is the language barrier, how much is the kids being behind, and how much is just because they’re kids and I’m not used to their learning speed. I don’t think they really know how to tell time either, so that doesn’t help when you’re trying to use times to explain something. It seemed like they were kind of understanding it by the end. I guess we’ll see on their homeworks tomorrow!

Baptist is part of a government program that provides lunch to the kids each day. It’s currently the only school in town that provides lunch, and because of that, the enrollment is higher than at the other public primary schools. There are women who cook for the whole school, and when it’s lunch time, one woman delivers bowls to the classroom and two deliver the food. It’s pretty cool, and it’s good to know that the kids are all eating at least one meal each day.

Math was more of the same number talk we’ve been doing for the last few days. If you’re wondering how many times you can teach the same thing, and have a bunch of the kids still be completely lost, the answer is at least five. It seems like they’re almost unlearning the things they already know because they try to make things harder than they are. For example, they definitely know how to say two digit numbers, but now they’re getting confused and they’ll say something like “two thousand, four hundred” for 24. Noooo!! It’s one thing when they struggle with the new concepts… it’s another when they regress because of the new concepts.

Avy and I had a mouse adventure today. When we were sitting around doing work after dinner, a mouse ran across the room into a kitchen. We managed to trap it under this bucket, but our plan didn’t go much past that. Honestly, I didn’t think there was any chance we would actually trap it. Anyway, we didn’t want Agnes to move the bucket in the morning without being ready for it, so we left a sign. I’m almost positive that the mouse is going to suffocate tonight though… I feel bad about it, but what are we supposed to do???

One of Avy’s big classroom management strategies is to keep a running score of the class vs. the teacher. When the kids are behaving and following the rules, they get a point. When someone breaks the rules or the class is misbehaving, the teacher gets a point. You pick an end point for the competition, and if the class wins, they get a reward. Today was the end of this round of the competition and the class won, so their reward was that we came back after lunch and did drawing time with colored pencils. It was good that we didn’t try to do anything that required a lot of concentration because the kids took their medications during lunch, and all of them came back feeling sick and dizzy. We spent about an hour trying to get them to draw things from their imaginations before heading home, totally exhausted.
The ultimate bummer of the day is that the couch is gone. I think Joe wanted it out, so Agnes said something about it removing it this morning. I am so upset. How am I supposed to get comfortable in a bunch of plastic chairs?!?! RIP couch. The ultimate awesomeness of the day was a hot bucket shower. I was dreading showering because the water is always freezing, so I heated some up in our tea kettle and combined it with some cold water in the bucket. I can’t even describe how incredible it was to take a warm shower. Life changing!!! What have I been doing for the last two months??? A warm shower is the answer to every problem.

Baptist Primary

Posted on September 28, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I feel mostly better today! Though I’m not sure if that’s because my body is actually recovering or if the meds are just masking the issues, and as soon as I stop taking them I’ll be right back to where I was on Monday (dramatically laying on the couch). For now, I’m just going to be happy and not question it.

Our classroom! When the weather is nice, it’s actually not bad. We brought rubber bands to tie the window shutters open so that there’s more light and air circulation, and that makes a huge difference. We’re trying to figure out a better way to hold them open that can be implemented in all of the classrooms.

When we got to school this morning, the place looked deserted. There were no kids or teachers anywhere to be seen. As we got closer, we could hear some noise coming from one of the classrooms. It turns out that first period on Wednesdays is Worship, and they had somehow managed to squeeze the entire school into ONE room. I seriously don’t know how they did it. That’s probably about 200 kids in a single classroom, plus the windows were closed so there’s no way it wasn’t 5000 degrees in there. It ended maybe 5 minutes after we arrived, and kids just kept pouring out of the room. Next week we want to get there early so we can see the whole worship and also understand how it’s physically possible.

One thing that’s in terrible condition is the floors. They didn’t have a lot of money when they built the second part of the school, so the quality of the floors is terrible. One of the teachers told us that they started breaking within 6 months. Avy is planning to use some of the money that she fundraised before coming to help fix the floors.

Avy worked with the kids on phonics again while I graded the homework. I actually really like grading. I think it’s fun to see how the kids are doing (though if they aren’t doing well, I start getting annoyed). Avy also said that when she first started with the class, she had a lot of trouble getting them to do homework. Now, more and more of them do it each day, and today, everyone turned something in! I can’t say that it was all good, but at least it’s a start. The homework we give them isn’t even that much of a time commitment. It’s usually 5 English questions and 5 Math questions that are exactly what we did in class, so if they paid attention and understood anything, it should take maximum 20 minutes.

Machetes all over the ground during the assembly. This is so typical, and I’m starting to just get used to it. I had to consciously remind myself that this is funny, not normal.

During the first break, there was a surprise assembly (as in, a surprise for us but pretty sure all of the other teachers were aware). First, they split the whole school into three teams which apparently they’re going to use to have a competition throughout the year. The headmaster kind of explained it, but I’m not too sure about how it’s going to work. I think it’s a way to break them up to do the different chores at school (such as machete-ing the grass, sweeping, cleaning up the school grounds, etc). Second, they appointed the class prefects. I also don’t know what that means, but I do know that each time someone’s name was called, the other kids cheered loudly, and the person who got picked didn’t seem thrilled. Third, they let the kids know that tomorrow there will be a mass drug administration to prevent worms and bilharzia (you can google them if you want, but if you don’t know I recommend preserving your ignorance). This whole thing took about an hour and a half, and then it was time for lunch… so much for math class. We let the kids eat, did a quick math lesson and assigned some homework, and headed home. Not the most productive school day, but I’m starting to get used to that.

Goodbye Nico

Posted on September 27, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I skipped the farm again this morning, partly because Nico wasn’t going and partly because my stomach is still a total mess. All I’ve eaten the last two days is plain spaghetti, plain rice, and I had plain toast for breakfast this morning. What could it possibly be complaining about anymore? I’m thinking now that maybe it wasn’t food poisoning..? How long does that last anyway? It’s times like these that I really wish Amber was still here. We were sending her messages all day yesterday with our symptoms and such, trying to get a diagnosis, but it was way better when she was just here to stitch us back together herself.

So that I didn’t feel totally worthless (and so that I could pretend for a little longer that Nico wasn’t leaving), I went to school with Avy this morning. She’s been teaching P3 at Baptist because they still don’t have a teacher. They’re supposed to have about six different subjects, but she’s just doing English and Math during the morning, and the P2 teacher combines them with his class in the afternoon.

Our small, sad family picture.. James, Avy, Nico, and me

In English, they’re just working on phonics. Avy went over the short vowel sounds today. Watching her in action is kind of crazy. I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t remember anything about when I was learning how to read. Teaching that to kids is a HUGE job! She’s really good at it though, so I was happy to have a chance to watch and learn (while simultaneously grading their homeworks). I was planning to teach Math, but my stomach wasn’t up to it, so I just observed that as well. It was good to have a day to figure out where the class is and see how she manages the kids. Assuming that I feel better tomorrow, I think I’m going to take over Math. They’re learning about saying numbers in words (for example, 5,698 = five thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight) and I’ve already taught that multiple times, so I think I can handle it.

Me and Nico with his hand washing bucket creation! We all talked about making a bucket with a nozzle for washing hands (they have a larger version of this at the clinic), and he actually made it happen! It’s probably my new favorite thing because one of my biggest complaints about being here for the first few weeks was never feeling like my hands were clean. Now I can!!

After lunch, the moment I’d been actively ignoring for the last couple days finally couldn’t be ignored any longer. Nico left. This might have been the hardest goodbye, partly because Nico and I spent so much time together, but also because aside from Avy, he was the last of our original group. He’s also the last of the people that I came here with, and I think you have a special bond with that group because you’re all figuring out and experiencing things for the first time together. It feels like the end of an era.

The house is so empty now. We’re down to just Avy, James, and me, at least until Saturday when we’re supposedly getting six new volunteers (I say “supposedly” because we can never get a straight answer from anyone about who is coming or what program they’re doing, and anything they do tell us ends up being at least a little wrong). It’ll be interesting to see the house dynamic with so many new people. Fingers crossed that it’s still good! They said we’re getting two new agriculture volunteers, thank goodness, because I’m really not into the idea of going to the farm by myself every morning. Maybe this week I’ll just focus on teaching and get back into the farm groove next week.

An Action Packed Day

Posted on September 14, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m finally starting to feel like I hit my groove at the farm, and that’s usually when things start going wrong. As soon as you’re feeling too confident, something happens to put you back in your place. We sowed another corn field this morning, and I was actually managing to move at an acceptable pace! I think I have the technique figured out. Things were going great! Anddd then I was an idiot and started being overconfident and managed to cut my pinky finger with my machete.

I was so embarrassed and we only had about 15 minutes left and I didn’t want the guys to know what had happened, so I was planning on just pretending nothing was wrong and finishing the work. Great plan except that apparently fingertip cuts bleed excessively. After about 1 minute of trying to keep going, I had to stop and signal to Amber to come help me. We didn’t have a band aid and didn’t want to ask, so she took the random objects (some string and a water bag) I had in my bag and pulled something together. Once we got back to the house, she cleaned it out and put an actual band aid on. It’s really not that bad (so Mom, stop freaking out).
After breakfast, we went around to the three schools we’re working with. We’ve spent a lot of time at EP, but I hadn’t been to Baptist or the junior high yet. We met the headmasters of both schools and talked a bit about what we can do to help out. Baptist still doesn’t have a teacher for P3, so that’s good…

Anyway, today was still a cleaning day so the kids were outside, chopping down some of the tall grass around the school with machetes. I’m glad that a bunch of 10 year olds can handle their machetes better than I can. It was a good morning for my ego.

In the afternoon, James had plans to go to the orphanage to train their soccer team, and we all decided to go with him. I haven’t been yet, and I was interested to see it. That’s where the food from the farm goes. It’s about a 20 minute tro ride and a 15 minute walk from our house. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the situation there. They have about 35 kids, and they all have their own beds and there are flush toilets and running water. They definitely aren’t living in luxury or anything, but it’s actually probably a step up from our house. The floors are even tiled!

WAIT. There’s more. They have a washing machine. Yes, an actual clothes washing machine. And it works! I almost lost my mind. I actually had a dream last week where we got a new house with a washing machine and I almost cried I was so happy. It’s funny the things you end up missing… I don’t think I would have put that on my list ahead of time. I probably would have mentioned running water, but I’m actually doing just fine without that. Anyway, they also have an oven and a microwave and a couch. Mmm I also miss my couch. It’s okay though. We’ll have a beautiful reunion in November.

A couple of the kids insisted on borrowing Amber’s and my sunglasses and then begged me to take a picture

Okay sorry, I got distracted. Like I was saying, it was nice to see what we’re working for at the farm every day. We got home just before dinner and then spent the night assembling school supply bundles for the kids at EP and Baptist. Avy raised money before she came to be used wherever she saw a need, and after seeing how many kids don’t have what they need to be successful at school, she started looking into getting some supplies for everyone. Each kid is going to get a notebook and a pencil case with a pencil, pen, eraser, sharpener, and ruler. They’ll still need more notebooks and the pencils won’t last all year, but it’s a start! It’s also good motivation for the kids because who doesn’t love new school supplies? We all helped put the pencil cases together, and they’ll be distributed to all of the kids later this week.

“First Day of School”

Posted on September 13, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Happy first day of school! Today at the farm, we did something new! A few weeks ago, Nico brought up the point that it would be good for the eggplants if we trimmed off the leaves that are damaged or close to the ground or aren’t really capturing any sunlight. Apparently then the plant can put more energy into growing bigger eggplants rather than wasting it on growing leaves that aren’t contributing anything.

One of the eggplants after Nico attacked it with scissors

This morning, he showed Amber and me which leaves we should be cutting, and we went through one whole eggplant field. I’m just hoping I didn’t kill any of the plants… When in doubt, I left more leaves (and then Nico trailed behind me saying, “why did you leave this one? It’s worthless!” and cutting off all the additional ones he thought should go).

After breakfast, we headed over to EP, the primary school where we held summer school, to have a meeting with the principal and see the kids cleaning. The meeting was mostly just a formality. Joe introduced us to the principal, who we’d mostly already met because of summer school, and he welcomed us to the school. That’s basically it. Meanwhile, the kids were all sweeping and moving desks and getting the classrooms ready. Everyone went to their rooms from last year, and the principal went one classroom at a time to relocate the kids who were moving up a grade. It might seem like that’s weird and that all of the kids should just move, but there are quite a few who don’t advance each year for one reason or another.

A cool bug we found on one of the plants

To give you a better idea of the school situation here, there are three public primary schools in Frankadua (EP, Baptist, and Roman Catholic) and two public junior highs (Roman Catholic and I don’t know what the other one is called). We don’t work with Roman Catholic, so we’re just in the other two primary schools and junior high. There isn’t a senior high school in town. Any kids who go to high school have to travel to Juapong. I talked to one of the girls and she said she walks every day, it takes about two hours to get there, and you get caned if you’re late. It would be 1 GHC (a little more than 25 cents) each way to take a tro to school. Can you imagine having to wake up at 5AM to walk 2 hours to school, spend the whole day learning, walk 2 hours home, and do your homework before going to sleep and waking up the next day to do it all again?

There are a lot of things with the school system that blow my mind. At home, teachers usually have to go back at least a week early to get their rooms ready and have teacher meetings and such. Here, during the first week, the teachers may not have their classes assigned yet, the class schedules aren’t made, and most kids don’t show up because they know nothing is going on. At EP, they’re having the teacher meeting on Friday… during school… to finalize everything. So that means an entire week of school will have gone by, and all of the kids will be sitting in their classrooms with nothing to do on Friday during the meeting. Like what?

Goodbye Summer School

Posted on September 8, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our class, pretending for 5 seconds that they’re well behaved

Happy last day of summer school!! Nico and I were excited for school today because we had games planned in every class. In English, we had a spelling bee and played hangman. In Math, we split the class in two and did a math problem competition where each team sent one person up to the board and they had to race to solve a multiplication problem. The elective was the same as yesterday, the balloon game, because the kids liked it so much.

There must have been something bad in the air today because our class was behaving horribly. We had 9 kids, and some of them had never been to summer school before. That was most of the problem because those kids were misbehaving, and as soon as one kid starts, it’s so hard to control the rest. In hindsight, there was one kid who I should have just sent home, but I was so determined to have a good last day that I couldn’t do it.

One of the kids solving a problem from the review of yesterday’s test

I was also really struggling with patience today, so instead of being able to work through disciplining the kids, I just shut down once I started getting annoyed. I know that’s not good, but it’s the end of the week and I’m thinking that this weekend will be a good time to reset and recover. In normal life, a teacher gets to go home and have some time away from their students. In our case, we come home and we STILL have to deal with the kids. They play outside our house and come on the porch even though they KNOW they aren’t supposed to. So you go to school and have to reprimand the kids who are breaking the rules, and then you get home and have to reprimand more kids who are breaking the rules. There’s no time to reset your patience.

Our afternoon activity consisted of making chalk outlines of the volunteers on our porch. This is what happens when the power goes out and it’s too hot to be inside without fans. It started because, as you can see, Amber is napping outside to avoid the heat and looked pretty unresponsive, so we decided to have some fun with it.

Sometimes you just want to do something without having kids around, but they’re EVERYWHERE. I go for a run and they run with me. I stretch and they stretch with me. I sit on the porch, trying to relax, and they can’t just leave me alone. We go to watch the soccer games and they’re always trying to sit on your lap or braid your hair or ask you questions. This is probably similar to what it’s like to have children, except when that happens, it’s your choice and you’re theoretically somewhat prepared for it. In this case, I don’t have my own children, and I certainly don’t want them right now, so I think that means I should be able to get some peace and quiet every once in a while.

Nico retrieving Amber’s boot from the poop

Okay, so after re-reading what I just wrote, I think I need a vacation. I definitely need some kid-free time to mentally recover because I’m not in the best place right now to be able to help the kids. Mostly I’m in a good place for being annoyed at them.
In other news, I had the chance to get some of my frustration out this afternoon because Nico, Amber, and I went to the farm to get started on the poop pit/fertilizer hole (and Fernanda and Avy came along just for fun).

There’s nothing like a little manual labor to take your mind off things. We decided to put the hole in the same place where they’re currently putting the pig poop, but that meant that we needed to dig through a layer of poop before getting to dirt. Amber was digging for about 5 seconds before her boots sank completely into the poop. Gross. By the time we left, all of the poop was out of the hole, but we still have a long way to go. At least the dirt doesn’t smell so bad.

The walk home ended up being my favorite part of the day. We were listening to music while digging the hole, so we just left it playing for the walk home and ended up basically dancing our way back. We have to go past a bunch of houses, and when we were almost home, a woman came outside (she was probably about 70 years old) and started dancing with us. The whole thing was so spontaneous and we were all acting like total goons. It was awesome. That energy extended into Fernanda’s goodbye bonfire, and we had a good end to what started out as a poopy day.

Test Day

Posted on September 7, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had another day of fertilizing at the farm, this time using Nico’s plan (which we kind of did yesterday, but today it was with permission). Amber got an emergency call from the clinic when we were on our way out the door, so she had to go deliver a baby while we fertilized eggplants. Comparable mornings, I think. I’m pretty sure that she’s delivered like 5 babies since we’ve been here, and she’s now the designated baby deliverer at the clinic because she’s been doing such a good job.

Part of me wonders what the clinic is going to do after Amber leaves. She usually comes home exhausted from running around all day. It’s cool though that they appreciate her and that she’s gotten to experience a lot of different things while working there. It sounds like she’s gotten to be involved with every part of the process, from consultations and paperwork to lab work and treatments.

Pancake with groundnut butter, sugar, and Milo

At breakfast, I had a pancake breakthrough! We have pancakes every other day for breakfast, but they’re a little different from the ones at home… I don’t think they put anything in them to make them rise, so while the ones at home are kind of bready, the ones here are more flat and sticky. Anyway, people usually put stuff on them. Everyone is different – some people put jam, some put groundnut butter (like peanut butter except from groundnuts instead and without the added sugar), some put sugar. I am in the groundnut butter group, and it’s always tasted fine, but my mom suggested adding sugar on top (thanks Mom!) and it changed EVERYTHING. I also added some Milo (chocolate powder that you can also use to make hot chocolate… which I’ve obviously done even though it’s constantly hot here). I used to like pancake day, but now I LOVE it. I’m also probably going to gain back all of that weight I lost during the first two weeks.

I went to school in a great mood because of my pancake, and the day kept getting better! We decided to make it test day since it was the second to last day of school, and we tested them on all of the things we’ve been teaching over the last three weeks. In English, I wrote a paragraph and they had to pull out some nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles, pronouns, and prepositions. They didn’t do so well individually, but when I guided them through it and we went over it as a class, it was pretty good. We’ll count it as a success.
Nico made the math test, and I decided to have some fun and take it with the kids. We also had some visitors, Maggie and Evans, two people who work with VCO (the volunteer organization). We tested the kids on comparing fractions, shapes, subtraction, multiplication, and writing numbers in word form. They all did well on the test (Maggie and Evans included), so that was encouraging! Just an fyi to everyone though, 40 is spelled forty, not fourty. Common mistake.

Nico and I found a bag of balloons at the volunteer house and decided to use them for the elective. We played a game where we split the class in half, drew a line on the ground in the classroom, and for 45 seconds, the teams had to try to put all of the balloons on the other team’s side of the line. At the end of the time, everyone had to freeze and we counted to see which team had less balloons on their side to decide the winner. It went so much better than I expected. The kids loved it, and we decided to save the balloons to use again tomorrow.

I passed out after lunch, apparently slept through my alarm, and Avy woke me up for dinner. Hm. I guess I’m still not getting enough sleep. Anyway, we went out and bought some snacks for school tomorrow to celebrate the last day of summer school. I can’t believe it’s almost over! Real school starts next week and it’s going to be so weird.

Reunion in P3/P4!

Posted on September 6, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had a new task at the farm today! It’s always exciting when we get to do something different, and this time it was putting fertilizer around the eggplants. John showed us how they usually do it, by digging a hole about a finger length from the plant and putting some fertilizer in. Nico immediately disapproved. He said that there are two problems with doing it that way. First, if none of the roots are under the hole you dig, all of the fertilizer is just wasted. Second, if some of the roots ARE under the hole, the fertilizer might be too much for them and they’ll burn. So either way, it’s really not the best thing for the plant. Nico told us to dig more of a U-shaped trench around the stem and put the fertilizer in there. He still wasn’t completely happy with that solution, and we decided that we needed to have a farm meeting later to talk about what to do in the future.

School was also exciting because Nico and I were reunited! Isabel and Sosane took over P2 for me, and I got to move back up to P3/P4! I was happy to be back, but at the same time, I was in the groove of teaching P2. It’s hard to adjust between teaching the different levels because you have to re-learn where the kids are skill-wise and adjust your thinking.
I read the kids a story in English class, and we asked them questions about it to work on reading comprehension. The story was taken from one of their textbooks, but honestly, the writing in the books is so bad that I don’t know how the kids are supposed to learn how to write properly. I read it out loud and modified it as I went so that it would make sense. Besides the numerous grammatical issues, some parts were so unclear that I didn’t understand what they were even trying to say. I wish I could just go through the book with a red pen and correct everything.

Our corn is growing! You can see the rows of little corn plants

The afternoon was spent doing laundry. I think that #1 on my list of things I miss from home is a washing machine. The list really isn’t that long, but laundry definitely makes the cut (also, seat belts, clean fingernails, flush toilets, and recycling). It probably took me 2-3 hours, and I can’t confidently say that any of my clothes are any cleaner than they were when I started. Hooray!
We had our farm meeting after dinner, and Nico presented his case against the single hole fertilizer technique. Joe (the guy in charge of the farm and logistics at the volunteer house) and John agreed to let us use Nico’s U technique instead. Nico also wanted to talk about a new way to use the pig poop (he’s an agricultural engineer, so unlike me he knows something about plants). They’re currently gathering it and using it somewhat, but he wants to dig a new hole for it (aka a new poop pit) and said that theyneed to mix in dry and wet leaves to make it a really good natural fertilizer for the farm. Apparently the soil is already good here, so he thinks that between that and the pig poop mixture, they won’t need to buy fertilizer anymore. They agreed to give it a try which is exciting but also means that we now have to dig a 3m x 3m x 1.5m hole. Things to look forward to! We’ll start Thursday afternoon probably.

Tonight we’re going to a birthday bonfire for one of the guys on the soccer team. It seems like every celebration here involves a bonfire… That’s great and all, but I wish that every bonfire also came with s’mores because seriously, how much better would that be? I should start bringing supplies with me so that when everyone else is drinking their beers, I can be chowing down on toasted marshmallows. Yummm.

Last Week of Summer School!

Posted on September 5, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

What’s the best way to spend a Monday morning? Shucking, that’s how! I’m actually getting to the point where I don’t hate it as much as I used to. Definitely still not my favorite task, but I think I would choose it over hoeing now. I’m immune to the grossness of the worms and worm eggs and just steer clear of anything that looks like it might contain an ant farm. Someone else can deal with that.

School went so well! Sosane and Isabel were just observing classes today, and they’re going to take P2 over from me tomorrow. It’s always interesting when an outsider comes in and you get the chance to see things through their eyes. Sosane said something about how I did a good job of managing the classroom, and my reaction was, “huh?” But then I started thinking, and while I wouldn’t say I’m GOOD at managing the kids, I’m definitely way better than I used to be. That was a cool realization, and I’m encouraged by it. I can do this, and one day, I might even feel like I know what I’m doing!

In English, I read a story, and we talked about the animals in it. We’ve been talking about animals for the entire last week since I started with P2, and the kids have actually learned something! It’s so cool when I ask them a question that I know they didn’t used to know the answer to, and now they do because we talked about it. Like I taught them about flamingos last week, and now they know what they look like, that they’re birds, and that birds have wings and feathers. I taught them something!

We had a sort of English/Math overlap after story time because we did a dictation (aka spelling test), and it was all numbers. On Friday, we worked on writing numbers in word form and vice versa, but I realized that they didn’t even know how to spell all of the numbers. The plan for today was to work on the spelling first and then do the exact same thing as Friday because they definitely need to keep practicing.

I really want the kids to at least know the things that are important for life in general, even if they don’t stay in school for much longer or go to college. In math, I think that two of those things are times tables and DEFINITELY knowing how to say numbers. For example, Avy went out to the market recently to check the price on something, and when she asked, the shopkeeper said that it was “two hundred fifty”. She was taken aback because that’s WAY more expensive than the thing should have been. She asked at another shop, and the person said “two hundred” and then showed her a 20. Soo… not two hundred. Twenty. Big difference. When she went back to the first shop and asked to see the bills, the woman showed her a 20 and a 5. Twenty five.

Based on that story, I didn’t feel bad spending another whole class on how to say numbers. It seemed like they were getting the hang of things by the end, so hopefully if any of them ever work in a shop, they can tell the difference between 20 and 200.

Two of my kids with the body part lesson. Yes, I’m an artistic genius.

For the elective, we talked about body parts. That’s another thing we’ve been working on where I’ve been able to see that they’re actually learning. It’s seriously so cool teaching them something new one day and hearing them repeat it back to you the next.

After school, I spent the rest of the day playing outside. James (one of the new volunteers) and I did a workout together and then he and Nico tried to teach me how to play rugby (it did not go well). Really, I want to get better at soccer while I’m here because currently I’m horrible. Maybe I’ll add acquiring some soccer and rugby skills to my list of goals (other goals: learn Ewe and how to carry things on my head).

James is responsible for making both of the sports goals happen, so good luck to him… I’ll keep you updated. So far, the Ewe is going okay, I haven’t carried anything on my head, and I’m not optimistic about rugby or soccer. Plenty of room for improvement!